Speaker:- Sarah Perris

Stuart Rhodes introduced our new member Michael Parrott, who is in the process of transferring from the Rotary Club of Whitchurch, after moving to Willaston on his retirement as a Methodist Minister.

Our Speaker today was Sarah Perris, the first female member of our Club, a trailblazer as we were about to find out. It is doubtful whether Sarah will be buying shares in the about to be floated Royal Mail as they failed to deliver the letter informing her that she was today's Speaker. Our Webmaster and Whensit Editor will be mortified having correctly included her therein.

As a trainer of presenters Sarah's mantra is Prepare, Prepare, Prepare, which she was singularly unable to do. However, she "prepared" something meaty between mouthfuls of beef and then lemon meringue pie interspersed with whispering sweet nothings in President Ashley's ear.

Most of us will have been holiday visitors in many countries across the globe but Sarah, whose father was in the Diplomatic Corps, had the fairly unique distinction of actually living in several different, often exotic, countries.

Her journey started in North London where she was born but after a few months the family went to Persia as it was then. She has vivid memories of a devastating earthquake there, which still make her tremor today. Then it was on to Caracas in Venezuela, Berlin and Baghdad by which time I was completely disorientated being navigationally challenged but reacquainted myself with our planet when they moved back to England to the tranquillity of Surrey.

Boredom may have set in as the next "posting" was to Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras, which is where Sarah, aged 15, had an encounter with a tarantula, which she vanquished with her Jimmy Choo. From Central America the next logical step was to journey to Delhi  India, a country that Sarah so loved that she not only went back two or three times but then named one of her twin daughters India! Bonn was the next stop which was bon but relatively tame.

Schooling during this peripatetic existence must have been a parental nightmare exacerbated by a slightly turbulent period at Bryanston School in Dorset where Sarah, after a couple of hiccoughs best left unexplained, completed her A-levels. Bryanston School was the only place where she suffered the chastening experience of temporary ejection.

20 years ago Sarah and husband drove the London to Sydney Rally passing through some of her old haunts. After some time in Detroit, where the twins were born, not surprisingly for someone who had lived in South America, she was headhunted to a senior PR management role with Rolls-Royce Bentley Motors. After such a nomadic existence Sarah has settled for 12 years now in Nantwich made bearable by the excitement of being a member of the Rotary Club of Nantwich. How long before the wanderlust in her DNA lures her to some other exotic location, not too soon though Sarah. And do avoid Biddulph!

Peter Mascarenhas